There have been some interesting updates over at SkyOS. First of all, it now has a VNC viewer, so you can control other computers from SkyOS. Another interesting addition are a set of VMWare tools; SkyOS now has full clipboard integration with the host OS when running in VMWare. Also added is seamless mouse integration, so you can just move your mouse to the edge of the VMWare window, and it will automatically ungrab it. There have been more changes, you can see the most prominent on SkyOS's website. For the under-the-hood changes, see the changelog.

SkyOS looks like a pretty cool OS, but how do they expect to go the commercial route and succeed where companies like NeXT and BeOS have failed?

There is one thing you might not have thought about here. Currently there is no official company behind SkyOS. No programmers that have to be paid, no investors that need to be kept happy, it's just Robert working in his spare time.
So while not selling many products at this stage of development, he is not going bankrupt from this fact.

I believe he is starting a business with this OS,weather it is public or not. He has a business relation manager and several people working on various parts of the os. If he pays them is none of our business.